Mayor demands full accounting of $418M given to MTA for its subway rescue plan

The city is calling upon the MTA to provide monthly updates on the Subway Action Plan to the MTA board. (Thomas Levinson/New York Daily News)

New York City wants to know where exactly its subway rescue plan cash is going.

Mayor de Blasio and Council Speaker Corey Johnson fired off a letter to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority demanding a full accounting of the authority's Subway Action Plan, for which the city forked over $418 million, despite the mayor's original objections.

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"City taxpayers deserve to know that they are getting a good return on their investment," they wrote. "The public is skeptical when it comes to work performed by the MTA, especially given recent public reports about prolonged delays and billions of dollars in cost overruns on MTA projects."

MTA Chairman Joe Lhota said he hadn't had a chance to read the letter in full.

"I'm very thankful that the city is providing the funding that we've been requesting for the last nine months," he said, following an MTA board meeting. "I look forward to being able to use that money in a positive way on behalf of all of our customers and the citizens who take the New York City subway system."

The mayor has been especially peeved of late about cost overruns for the East Side Access project. The state announced a $1 billion cost overrun for the project — and he's argued the state withheld those overruns until after the budget process was over.

"Had that information been provided to the public and to the legislature, if they heard that the MTA had blown another billion dollars, I'm not sure they would have been so quick to demand that the city put in the money that we put in," de Blasio said at a press conference Wednesday. "So, we're not going to keep contributing the taxpayers' money into a sinkhole. We're not going to be the fall guys for the MTA's inefficiency and ineffectiveness."

Lhota insisted the information had not been withheld.

Mayor de Blasio has been especially peeved of late about cost overruns for the East Side Access project. (Anthony DelMundo/New York Daily News)

"Hogwash. Hogwash," he said. "I mean, the mayor's making that up."

He said that board members, including those representing the city, had been informed about the cost overruns before they were made public.

In the letter, the city is calling upon the MTA to provide monthly updates on the Subway Action Plan to the MTA board.

The pair also want regular briefings to representatives for the mayor and council speaker; to conduct a midcourse review halfway through the plan; to redeploy money from elsewhere to focus on the most important infrastructure needs like signal work; to better explain what is causing subway delays and to overhaul delay statistics; and to review the use of signal timers and service levels.

"We want to see how the money is spent. We want to ensure it is spent on our subways. We want to see what's working and what's not," de Blasio said. "And we want this accounting to be public, and transparent, and regular, and consistent, because it's outrageous that the MTA would take our money but not agree to transparency."

Johnson, in his own press conference, said the city ought to have a say on how its money is spent.

"That letter is about a level of accountability and transparency, since a significant amount of city money is going into it," he said.